


Settle Down

by vondrostes



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon, Alternate Universe - Daemons, Bigotry & Prejudice, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Hurt/Comfort, Kissing, M/M, POV Louis
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-03
Updated: 2018-06-03
Packaged: 2019-05-17 21:50:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,006
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14839796
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vondrostes/pseuds/vondrostes
Summary: Louis has always known what it's like to be judged for something you can't control. Harry's about to find out.





	Settle Down

**Author's Note:**

> This is set in an alternate version of the canon universe in which everyone has daemons a la The Golden Compass. I took hefty liberties with the concept and made up all my own rules for it to fit the story I wanted to tell. If anyone is inclined to make fanart of Di & Olivia, I will love you forever.
> 
> I have other fics! And a looooong WIP! Please check out my other works if you enjoy this fic. :)
> 
> Follow me on Twitter for more writing goodies: @vondrostes (personal) & @TerranAlleen (writing updates)

Settling was complicated in the best of circumstances.

Settling at twenty-one while under pressure from the whole world to _just do it already_ was probably one of the worst you could ever ask for.

It wasn’t unheard of for someone to settle at the tail-end of puberty rather than the beginning, but it was extremely rare. Louis had been an early bird, settling the summer before the start of his first term at secondary school. But things hadn’t exactly been a walk in the park for him either.

Certain types of daemons were seen as…problematic, to say the least; with most predator-animals being viewed as early indicators of troubling behaviour from their counterparts. It was pseudo-science at best, but that didn’t keep a large portion of the population from buying into it at every turn.

By the time Louis settled, he’d already experienced his fair share of bullying from the other kids at school for having a daemon that presented as male, since same-gender daemons usually, but not always, predicted some degree of same-gender attraction. A slightly more reliable brand of pseudo-science, but Louis’s mother had been quick to reassure him that he was free to love whomever he chose.

Louis had been so excited to show his mother Di’s settled form when it had finally happened, only to be faced with the first sign that all was not well: the flicker of fear on Jay’s face when she’d caught her first glimpse of the turquoise-scaled African bush viper coiled around her young son’s forearm.

People who had snake daemons were generally looked down upon by greater society. But venomous daemons were another matter entirely. Suddenly, Louis was considered highly dangerous—through no fault of his own—and it didn’t matter that he was a sweet-tempered little boy who only wanted to show people how pretty Di was; all they would see was a potential threat.

A decade later, Louis was more than appreciative of the fact that he was at least able to keep Di’s settled form a secret easily. It was harder for people with larger predatory animals who attracted wary glances wherever they went in public.

Sure, it was annoying to have fans constantly tweeting him, asking for a picture of Di, demanding that he give them more hints about his settled form, or pleading with Louis to confirm their guesses about him.

It helped though that Zayn was even more secretive than he was, not even letting fans know his daemon’s name, let alone her settled form. Even their bandmates hadn’t ever seen her before, but they respected that Zayn had his reasons for maintaining such strict boundaries. Hell, Louis certainly wasn’t going to complain when it kept some of the heat off of him and Di in the meantime.

Liam and Niall were the group’s normies: Liam with his cocker spaniel Georgia, and Niall with his owl Rose.

But Harry—well, Harry was complicated.

He’d been the only one whose daemon hadn’t settled by the time they’d tried out for the X Factor, which had been a point of novelty at first for both the judges and the fans. For a while, they were worried about what would happen when Olivia finally did settle, when Harry’s party trick of having her take a new form on stage every night would no longer be possible. Once they’d realised the band wasn’t a flash in the pan situation though, that fear had lessened. But Olivia still hadn’t settled.

They’d stopped obsessing over it so much after that.

Which was why Louis hadn’t been expecting the frantic phone call from Harry on their break, demanding that he come to Harry’s house right that second without any explanation whatsoever. Louis went, of course. Even if Harry hadn’t sounded about to cry over the phone, Louis would have gone. Harry’s panicked tone just made him move faster.

Three near-accidents on the motorway later, Louis was stood outside Harry’s home in Hampstead Heath, his palms coated with sweat as he approached the door. Di was coiled up in his jacket sleeve as per usual, and Louis could feel the slender serpent gradually tightening around his forearm as Louis let himself into the house.

“He’s probably fine,” Di reassured him as they entered to find almost all of the lights off inside. Being a part of Louis himself though, Louis knew Di didn’t really believe that.

Louis found Harry in his bedroom, sitting with his back up against the door to the loo. Louis could see light peeking out from underneath it, but there was no other source of illumination in the room besides the moonlight coming in through the open window.

Harry’s eyes were puffy and red from crying, but Louis couldn’t tell if he’d started up after Harry had called him, or if he’d waited until he’d stopped crying altogether to make the call.

“Where’s Olivia?” Louis asked, scanning the room for any sign of Harry’s daemon. It was rather fruitless because she could be anything. Most likely a mouse, hidden in Harry’s pocket, since she liked to make herself small when he was feeling particularly anxious or upset.

“In the toilet,” Harry replied hoarsely.

Louis squinted at him in confusion. “You don’t actually mean she’s in the toilet bowl, right?” he asked, a little unsure. “Because there are some lines that probably shouldn’t be—”

“She’s on the other side of the door,” Harry said, interrupting. And it was really a testament to how bad Harry must have been feeling that he didn’t so much as crack a smile at Louis’s bad joke.

True enough, when Louis examined the sliver of light underneath the door, he could just make out a shadow dimming some of gap there. “What is she?” he asked curiously. Whatever it was, she was obviously quite large. That was unusual for her. She tended toward medium to small mammals, things Harry could cradle easily in his lap.

“She settled, Lou.”

Louis froze, gaping at Harry for a moment before finally managing to find his voice. “Wow, that’s—congrats, Harry, oh my god. Did it just happen? Is that why you called?”

The process of settling could be a bit traumatic at first for some people, so it made sense now why Harry looked so wrecked. But usually, the instinct was to initiate as much contact between daemon and person as possible, not…whatever Harry and Olivia were doing.

Harry shook his head, eyes starting to water again. “This afternoon,” he said in a voice just barely above a whisper. “I didn’t—I don’t know what to do, Lou.”

“What’s wrong, H?” Louis asked, his brows creasing in concern as he took a step forward toward Harry.

He wasn’t expecting it when Harry suddenly threw himself at Louis, wrapping his arms unexpectedly around Louis’s stomach. There was a beastly wail from inside the loo, and then Harry was flinching away from Louis, stumbling back toward the door. He must have gotten too far from Olivia when he’d moved toward Louis. So not a bird, then.

“Harry,” Louis said carefully, “can you please tell me what’s wrong?” He held his breath as Harry slowly turned and opened the door.

Louis’s question was answered as soon as he saw Olivia haloed in the doorway.

Ah. Well, that was a problem.

To Louis’s credit, he managed to school his expression into something neutral, remembering all too well the way his mother had allowed just the slightest frisson of fear to take hold of her before she’d collected herself. That had stuck with him. He didn’t want Harry to have the same experience.

“Harry,” he said slowly, “she’s really beautiful.” Louis wasn’t pandering. She _was_ beautiful. He just knew that not everyone would appreciate that beauty.

“She’s a lion,” Harry replied flatly.

Olivia growled at him from behind, but Harry didn’t turn to acknowledge it.

“Well,” Louis interjected, “technically, she’s a mountain lion.”

Harry’s irritated stare made it very clear that Louis’s snide comments were not helping in the slightest. But Louis wasn’t sure what to say to make it better.

He was the best qualified to give Harry advice, being in a similar boat, but a venomous snake was easily hidden from the public. A massive mountain lion that nearly dwarfed Harry himself? Not so much.

It was a shame really that mountain lions had such a bad rep. They probably could have gotten away with a smaller wildcat, or maybe something people could wrap their minds around taming as an exotic pet, like a wolf. But cougars were infamous for being aggressive, territorial, and deadly. Everything Harry wasn’t.

“What do I do?” Harry asked helplessly. Neither he nor Olivia had moved from their respective positions after the door had opened.

There were a lot of potential answers to that question, and Louis was having trouble sorting through them to find the right one. God. Louis wasn’t a qualified therapist. He wasn’t equipped to handle this. Di, of course, ever the chatterbox when his opinion wasn’t needed or wanted, was completely silent.

Louis furrowed his brows, noting the awkward way Harry was holding his body in counterpart to Olivia’s stance, like they were both simultaneously trying to pull away from each other while being drawn back together.

It wasn’t a good sign.

“Have you touched her yet?” Louis asked worriedly. He was doing his best not to panic. “Since she settled?”

Harry shook his head.

“Harry—”

“I know, I know, but—” His voice dropped back down to a whisper. “I just keep hoping she’ll change back again.”

Louis pursed his lips and gave Harry a pitying stare. They both knew she wasn’t going to change back.

Louis took a step closer, cautiously, not wanting to spook either Harry or Olivia as he moved toward them. Settling could be a rough experience. It was the point at which someone’s daemon was the least controlled, when fears about predatory shapes were the most justified.

But Louis couldn’t not try to help them.

Louis had heard the horror stories about settlings gone wrong, usually involving late bloomers like Harry, where human and daemon were unable to accept the change and ended up in a perpetual state of torturous imbalance. None of those stories had a happy ending.

Touch was essential to maintaining a proper bond. Daemons who were separated from their humans for too long suffered, physically and mentally, and their counterparts never fared much better. Louis felt sick at the idea that Harry and Olivia might be so far gone that a splitting would be necessary. He refused to accept that. There had to be some way Louis could fix this.

Maybe there was.

“Harry…” Louis began uncertainly. This was a bad idea. God, this was such a bad idea.

Harry looked up at him with wide watery eyes. “What is it?”

“Do you think…would it be okay if I touched her?” Louis felt his stomach do a flip as soon as the words were out of his mouth. It was the most intimate thing Louis could ask for, more than sex even, reserved only for committed romantic partners and parents and children.

Louis knew that parents sometimes did this, acted as a proxy of sorts to ease the trauma of reinitiating the bond after settling in cases like this, but Louis wasn’t Harry’s parent. He’d never even mustered up the courage to try and kiss him in all the years they’d known each other, and now here he was, practically asking Harry to put his soul in Louis’s hands.

Louis almost couldn’t believe it when Harry nodded and lifted his own hand for Louis to take. He reached out a little uncertainly even though it had been his idea, twining his fingers with Harry’s and feeling Di tighten up around his wrist in response.

With Harry’s hand clinging tightly to his, Louis took another step forward, and another, until he was only centimetres from Olivia, who eyed him mistrustfully.

“Please don’t bite me,” he pleaded with her, eliciting a quiet chuckle from Harry, though Louis could hear the strain in it still. “You know I wouldn’t ever do anything to hurt you. Either of you.”

Harry drew in a sharp breath at that, but Louis didn’t take his eyes off Olivia for a second as he reached out toward her with a gently trembling hand.

When his fingers finally made contact with her fur with a feather-light touch at first, just barely grazing the tips of the golden hairs on her back, there was a sudden spark of electricity that ran up his arm and through him, zinging into the fingers of his other hand and transferring to Harry, who let out another gasp as his hand tightened around Louis’s. But Harry didn’t ask him to stop, and Olivia hadn’t made any attempt to move away from him, so Louis dug his fingers in a little harder, slowly stroking them through her thick fur until the buzzing feeling filled his head up like a swarm of bees.

Finally he turned to check on Harry, who was slumped back against the door frame, his chest heaving from some suppressed effort.

“Is it too much?” Louis asked him.

Harry shook his head, and then let out a choked whine as Louis stroked his hand again through Olivia’s fur, petting her round the ears and jaw, and garnering a pleasured rumble from her throat in response. Louis kept at it, until it looked as if Harry’s legs were about to give out, and then tugged at him with their intertwined hands.

Harry tumbled into his side, and Louis could feel the thrumming of energy wherever their skin made contact. He let go of Olivia finally, and Harry let out a bereft sound.

“It’s fine,” Louis soothed. “Come on, love, give me your hand.” He gestured for a few seconds before giving up entirely and reaching back to grab Harry’s free hand from behind his back himself.

Harry looked terrified as Louis slowly brought his palm down to rest on Olivia’s neck, but the change in their demeanours was instantaneous. Olivia let out a drawn-out purr, her fur vibrating where Harry and Louis’s hands were pressed over her neck.

“She’s the same, see?” Louis whispered. “You’re the same. You’re still that sweet little boy from Holmes Chapel who didn’t want to leave home because he was too afraid of breaking his mum’s heart. I can see that. The fans will see it too. It doesn’t matter what shape she’s in.”

Without Louis even having to think it first, Di suddenly unwound himself from around Louis’s wrist and slithered down to where his and Harry’s hands were still connected. Harry froze, and for a startling second, Louis was worried that Harry didn’t have the same faith in him that Louis had in Harry, but then Di was moving away from Louis and up Harry’s arm, and Harry let out a breathless shriek of delight, and everything was just the way it should be.

Louis wasn’t even sure how it happened, but suddenly he was kissing Harry, rough and open-mouthed at first before slowly winding it down to their lips slickly sliding together in a slow rhythm before finally pulling apart.

Harry looked more dazed than ever before, and when Louis came back to himself, he realised his hand was curled tightly in the fur of Olivia’s neck.

“Shit, sorry,” he breathed out as he released her suddenly. He didn’t anticipate the pained whine from Harry that followed, nor Harry’s desperate grasping for Louis’s hand. Louis stared in disbelief as Harry slowly brought his fingers back down into Olivia’s fur again.

“Just—let’s stay like this, okay?”

Louis was fine with that, for as long as Harry would let him, but it wasn’t exactly the most comfortable position to be in while standing in the doorway to Harry’s loo, so they ended up in his bed instead, every square inch of them pressed up against each other.

Louis watched in blissed out wonder as Harry gently stroked the scales on Di’s head and back, a brilliant glistening aquamarine in the moonlight.

“It’s kind of ironic, isn’t it?” Louis finally managed, the words slurring together a bit as he spoke. “I mean, if anything, you’re the Slytherin and I’m the Gryffindor.”

Harry’s finger paused. He gave Louis a pointed look. “That’s not funny, Lou.”

“It’s a little funny.”

Louis wasn’t sure how long they actually spent like that, all twisted up in each other and practically breathing the same air, but it was nearly dawn when they finally separated just long enough for Harry to pull out his phone and take a picture of Olivia quietly snoozing at the foot of the bed, Di twined around her neck like a jewelled collar.

There was hardly any deliberation behind the decision to post the picture on Twitter and Instagram for their millions and millions of followers to see. Even Louis, who had spent years hiding himself from the world at the behest of his family and their management, couldn’t muster up the energy to care anymore. None of it mattered, not with Harry sprawled out against his chest, typing out a short caption to accompany the photo and looking up at Louis expectantly, waiting for him to press send.

“Hang on,” Louis told him, reaching past the mess of curls obscuring a good portion of his vision to access the emoji keyboard on Harry’s phone. He stuck the tip of his tongue out between his lips in concentration and carefully selected the snake and then the lion (close enough), with a well-placed heart emoji between the two. “There.”

“You’re such a sap,” Harry laughed.

“You love it,” Louis reminded him.

He was rewarded with an overly fond smile and another quick kiss pressed half-against his lips, the rest missing the mark and wetting his chin. “Yeah,” Harry replied warmly. “I really do.”

Louis pressed send.

_Guess who finally made up her mind! xx_

 


End file.
